This past weekend was Angela’s “Un-Shower” for us 🙂
Sunday was a generally cooler day than the rest of the week (only 89F rather than 100F+), and we caught the train out to the ‘burbs. The train had no A/C and all the windows were closed so we were already sweaty by the time we arrived. Delightful.
The carnival theme was super cute and awesome and not at all ‘baby shower-y’. Bunting, string lights, balloons & lanterns. Games included: ring toss, balloon pop (and guess the gender), knock down the cans, duck pond, bouncy castle, balloon animals (!), and of course the usual piñata 🙂 Lewis and Ian even broke out the flaming juggling torches and devil sticks toward the end of the night!
Food was typical carnival fair: hot dogs and all the fixings, chips & dips, chex mix, sno cones, candy floss, cake pops… all tasty stuff 🙂
The official schedule was listed as 1pm-7pm but we got there closer to 12:30 and most people hung out until past 9:30pm! It was a long hot day. It was exhausting but lovely. I wanted to stay to help clear up but it was already late and Dugan needed to load up the car and get a bunch of us all home to the northside (not to mention the massive amount of gifts!).
So many people coming out to celebrate with us made it comparable to our wedding in my mind. I mean Angela throws a bunch of parties and not everyone can make it to all of them, but I felt so honored that so many people managed to make the trip out to the ‘burbs to spend the day playing games 🙂
The Prenatal Visit:
This evening I had another doctors appointment. I am 36.5weeks pregnant, weight is 178lbs (yikes!) and BP is 124/70. Truth be told I’m kind of depressed about my weight gain. I know I’m carrying a baby and I know I’m dealing with water retention and I know that the hospital scales might be calibrated slightly differently from my scales at home, but it still bums me out.
Today I had a Non Stress Test. They said it’s a routine test they do on women of Advanced Maternal Age, but that it’s just a one off and not a weekly thing. So they hooked me up to a couple of monitors and I lay down to ‘relax’ with the instructions to press the button every time I felt baby move. Except baby wasn’t moving too much so I wasn’t exactly ‘relaxed’. Today I have been having a lot of intestinal discomfort too so I had to focus really hard to guess whether what I felt was baby or bowel. After I don’t know how long, the doctor came in and made sure I knew when to come to Labor & Delivery and covered a few other things while I was still hooked up, she left for a few minutes before the nurse came back and unhooked me and had me undress from the waist down for the rest of my appointment. Apparently after looking at the graph they decided they weren’t happy with baby’s level of movement so I had to get hooked up again. This time I drank some more water beforehand and baby seemed to perk up. Of course baby perked up even more back to usual wriggly-ness when I was done with everything and back in reception sorting out the next few weeks worth of appointments. So frustrating! At least when I was done my belly was doing it’s usual wonky thing so that added to the proof for my doctor that baby was moving around.
I had my first internal exam and while I am ‘carrying low’ and baby’s head is down, his/her head is still high and my cervix is still closed. This makes me feel *so* much better about Lewis going off to California for a week on Sunday. Dr W said that I should be fine for about 2 more weeks before we start seeing any change down there.
She was sympathetic about my swollen ankles and saluted Lewis’s efforts with foot rubs etc 🙂
So now I’m having appointments every week until baby miller’s arrival and we actually scheduled an appointment for August 9th (after my due date) just in case he/she is still hanging out and they need to check anything.
interna
Confession: I actually had a mini breakdown when I went to bed after the not-at-all-relaxing ‘non stress test’, which even while I was sobbing with stress about already being a bad mum was telling myself that this probably wasn’t healthy for baby either. I just got so scared that I haven’t been looking after myself/baby well enough or something. I know I’ve felt baby move *a lot*, but having him/her be quiet and resting during a test of movement made me overly anxious. Now I am hyper aware of feeling for baby move. I will be doing lots of kick counts today to reassure myself.
Chasing The Stormbringer 